# How People Use ChatGPT

> Research reveals how people actually use ChatGPT — primarily for practical guidance, information seeking, and writing — and how AI summaries in search results are fundamentally changing browsing behavior.

Research reveals how people actually use ChatGPT — primarily for practical guidance, information seeking, and writing — and how AI summaries in search results are fundamentally changing browsing behavior.

## How People use ChatGPT

**Publisher:** NBER

[Open the source](https://www.nber.org/papers/w34255) ↗

> The three most common Conversation Topics are <strong>Practical Guidance</strong>, <strong>Seeking Information</strong>, and <strong>Writing</strong> — collectively accounting for about 77% of all ChatGPT conversations.

> <ul><li>About 49% of messages are users asking ChatGPT for guidance, advice, or information (<strong>Asking</strong>)</li><li>40% are requests to complete tasks that can be plugged into a process (<strong>Doing</strong>)</li><li>1% are messages that have no clear intent (Expressing)</li></ul>

> Nearly half of all messages sent by adults were from users under the age of 26.

## Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results

**Publisher:** Pew Research

[Open the source](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results) ↗

> Google users who encounter an <strong>AI summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than users who do not see one</strong>. Users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits. Those who did not encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often (15% of visits).

> Google users are more likely to end their browsing session entirely after visiting a search page with an AI summary than on pages without a summary. This happened on 26% of pages with an AI summary, compared with 16% of pages with only traditional search results.

## Half of online shoppers now use Gen AI: The hype, the habits, and the hesitations

**Publisher:** Omnisend

[Open the source](https://www.omnisend.com/blog/gen-ai-online-shopping-survey/) ↗

> Surveyed 4,000 adults across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia to find out how shoppers are actually using AI.

> <ul><li>Around 50% of online shoppers in each country use Gen AI for ecommerce tasks at least once a month</li><li>ChatGPT dominates and is preferred by 46% of respondents who use AI for shopping</li><li>1 in 4 say ChatGPT gives better product suggestions than Google</li><li>85%+ report at least one concern: privacy, AI fatigue, or bad recommendations</li><li>1 in 3 shoppers still do not want AI handling checkout</li></ul>

> In short, AI has earned a seat at the shopping table, but not full control of the wallet just yet.